Recycling is becoming increasingly important for the preservation of natural resources. Because of the enormous volume of books manufactured by various publishing companies throughout the United States, the commercial book recycling business has become an increasingly important part of overall recycling efforts. Publishers generate thousands of books each week that are deemed "non-sellable" for various reasons. Instead of selling these books to retailers, wholesalers or other distributors, the publishers sell them as scrap to private book recycling companies. At the recycler's plant, the covers are removed and the pages of the books are bundled for shipment to paper mills. The publishers rely on the recyclers to assure that the books are actually destroyed rather than resold in readable condition. The prohibited resale of these "non-sellable" books, intended for recycling, has become a problem of increasing magnitude in the book recycling industry. In this regard, the reputation of the book recycling industry has been damaged by some unethical recyclers who obtain shipments of the "non-sellable" books, intended for recycling, and then resell such books in readable condition.
Efforts have been made, by the publishers and private book recycling companies, to mark the "non-sellable" books at the publishers' warehouses, before shipment to the recycling plant, so as to discourage the unethical resale of such books. However, those efforts have been largely unsuccessful. In particular, a spray coating apparatus for spray coating entire lots of books with a dye composition, has been used. The spray coating device has presented various problems. Although the spray coating device does effectively coat and identify the "non-sellable" books so that they cannot readily be sold, it also significantly decreases the recycling value of the books. Books treated with the spray-coating dye composition absorb substantial amounts of liquid and thus increase in size and weight. It becomes extremely inefficient to prepare the books for recycling and to ship such treated books to paper recycling mills.
Moreover, the pages which absorb the spray-coating dye composition become partially or substantially dyed. Paper recycling mills are not eager to process dyed paper into pulp since additional chemical processing additives and steps are necessary to bleach out the dye. These additional processing steps and additives are costly and create environmental problems. Thus, the paper recycling mills pass this cost on to the book recyclers by "downgrading" the quality rating of the recycled paper from books. The paper mills offer the recyclers a much lower price per unit weight for dyed paper than for substantially undyed paper. The greater the amount of dye absorbed by the pages of the books, the less valuable the paper will be. Thus, if the books absorb too much of the spray coat composition, the paper mills often refuse to process the salvaged paper at all. In this case, the books are rendered completely useless for recycling purposes and must be discarded in a landfill at substantial expense. However, even if edges of the pages are slightly colored with a composition, the recycling mills will often "downgrade" the quality of the paper.
To avoid the downgrading problem, many of the recyclers refuse to process books treated by the prior art spray-coating method.
Thus, methods and apparatus for marking recyclable books which alleviate the inefficiencies and waste associated with conventional spray-coating methods are needed. Moreover, such devices and methods should be inexpensive, rugged and suitable for use by unskilled individuals. Presently, no known acceptable marking method and apparatus exists.
Other marking equipment and apparatus have been developed for other purposes. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,656,939 to Lasauskas et al, a marking device is disclosed which utilizes a revolving printer wheel to print indicia on the bottom surface of packages which pass along a horizontal conveyor surface and thereafter contact the printer wheel as shown in FIG. 6 of the '939 patent. The uppermost portion of the printer wheel is disposed in the same plane as the horizontal conveyor surface. The printer wheel is operably associated with the bottom surface of the packages so that the printer wheel is rotated by frictional engagement with the bottom surface of said package. The marking device of '939 patent would not be suitable for marking recyclable books, since the structure of the marking device requires the uppermost surface of the printer wheel to be disposed in the same plane as the conveyor surface. Such a structure would mark a portion of the edges of pages of the recyclable books.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,738,260 to Navi et al discloses an apparatus for printing indicia on the bottom surface of a plurality of moving containers. The apparatus includes a printing device disposed between a pair of conveyor belts.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,440 to Lazzarotti et al discloses an apparatus for sorting a plurality of stacked items and producing a singulated flow of the items by combining two or more adjacent conveyor belts operating at different speeds.
The present invention solves the aforementioned shortcomings of the prior art, and thus fulfills the needs of the industry by providing a simple and efficient method and apparatus for marking recyclable books without decreasing the recyclable value of such books.